OF SELBORNE. 253 
acknowledged that this candid philosopher was 
convinced afterward that some latitude must be ad. 
mitted of in the distance of echoes according to 
time and place. 
When experiments of this sort are making, it 
should always be remembered that weather and 
the time of day have a vast influence on an echo; 
for a dull, heavy, moist air deadens and clogs the 
sound, and hot sunshine renders the air thin and 
weak, and deprives it of all its springiness, and a 
ruffling wind quite defeats the whole. In a still, 
clear, dewy evening, the air is most elastic, and 
perhaps the later the hour the more so. 
Echo has always been so amusing to the imagi- 
nation that the poets have personified her, and in 
their hands she has been the occasion of many a 
beautiful fiction. Nor need the gravest man be 
ashamed to appear taken with such a phenomenon, 
since it may become the subject of philosophical or 
mathematical inquiries. 
One should have imagined that echoes, if not 
entertaining, must at least have been harmless and 
inoffensive ; yet Virgil advances a strange notion, 
that they are injurious to bees. After enumerating 
some probable and reasonable annoyances, such as 
prudent owners would wish far removed from their 
bee-gardens, he adds, 
‘* Aut ubi concava pulsu 
Saxa sonant, vocisque offensa resultat imago.” 
This wild and fanciful assertion will hardly be 
admitted by the philosophers of these days, espe- 
cially, as they all now seem agreed that insects are 
not furnished with any organs of hearing at all. 
But if it should be urged that, though they cannot 
Y 
